


Heart Of Gold

by there_must_be_a_lock



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 18:12:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17329973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/there_must_be_a_lock/pseuds/there_must_be_a_lock
Summary: Sam remembers her often, whenever he’s reminded of love or how things could’ve been.





	Heart Of Gold

When Sam remembers her, he remembers the summer they met. He was fourteen and she was thirteen, and he remembers thunder and the taste of salt and the thin cotton of her pillowcase under his cheek. 

 

Her dad drops her off in the junkyard and she stomps away, and Sam gets a quick impression of a skinny little thing with her backpack slung over her shoulder and holes in her jeans. He tries to introduce himself as she passes him, but she rolls her eyes with a fury that makes him cringe, and he lets her go. 

 

They circle around each other for the whole week she stays there. Sam has trouble looking at her for too long; it feels like looking straight into the sun. Sometimes he finds her staring at him like he’s a puzzle, something to be analyzed and put back together, but when he meets her eyes she always scurries out of the room before he can try to talk to her.

 

One day, when the rain comes down thick and hard and chases him inside, he goes upstairs to retreat to his room. He’s tiptoeing past her open door when he sees her, curled on her bed, her cheeks covered in tear tracks. 

 

He slides in silently, not sure what to say, worried she’ll shatter or maybe just scream if he makes a sound. He sits down at the foot of the bed and waits, and when she doesn’t immediately tell him to fuck off, he lies down, facing her, watching another tear bead in the corner of her eye and roll over the bridge of her nose. 

 

“My dad didn’t even tell me where he was going this time,” she says, and in spite of the tears, her voice is steady and furious. 

 

He remembers watching a sitcom, one of those syrupy-sweet ones, and in one episode the little girl had fallen off her bike and skinned her knee, and the mother had smoothed a band-aid over it, ever so gently, and then kissed it, even more gently, “To make it all better.” 

 

She looks like her world is one big skinned knee in that moment, and so Sam leans forward and kisses her, butterfly-soft, tasting the traces of tears left on her lips. He pulls away as soon as he realizes what he’s done, and she’s staring at him, smiling, like he’s shocked her out of her brokenness. 

 

“What was that for?” she asks. 

 

“Trying to make it better,” he mumbles, and it sounds painfully stupid when he says it out loud, but she’s still smiling, radiant and dazzling. He kisses her again, and the way her lip pillows between his makes him finally understand why kissing was invented in the first place. 

 

Her dad picks her up the next day, of course, before Sam can work up the courage to suggest they keep in touch. 

 

The next time he sees her is two years later. She’s sitting on the steps of Bobby’s house eating a popsicle, and her lips and teeth are stained blue when she grins up at him. Sam can’t breathe for what feels like a very long time. 

 

It takes them a few days of circling nervously again, one ducking their head when the other smiles, trying to hide the way they’re blushing, but Sam eventually kisses her again. They curl into each other on the lumpy twin bed and kiss until Sam is dizzy and breathless, and a few days later, they lose their virginity together on that same narrow bed, fumbling and touching and exploring until Sam feels like there are lightning bolts in his stomach and crashes of thunder in his ribcage. 

 

He scribbles his number down on a scrap of paper and slides it into her hand when he hugs her goodbye. She calls him, sometimes. They’re always shy at first, not sure what to say, and then words come easier and easier until Sam can’t get them out fast enough, and they always end up talking for hours, sharing more words than Sam says in the rest of the month combined. 

 

The calls happen less and less, though. And then he tells her about Stanford, about getting out, and there’s not much left to say, then, because they both know it’ll be goodbye. 

 

He thinks about her, sometimes. Sometimes he sees a smile that reminds him of hers, and his heart jumps into his throat. But mostly he’s busy, and he has Jess, and then Dean comes along and there’s the whole thing where they’re busy sorta accidentally causing the apocalypse… Besides, he’s pretty sure she doesn’t want to talk to him. She would’ve called, otherwise, right? 

 

It doesn’t surprise him, though, when he walks into Asa’s and sees her. It startles him, makes him go hot and cold all over, but it doesn’t surprise him, because some part of him always figured they’d find their way back to each other. It feels inevitable. 

 

She’s standing by the stereo, flipping through the CD collection, when Sam walks in. It takes him a few seconds to connect that smile, those lush curves, with the girl he’d met and her popsicle-stained teeth and her skinny arms, and then something in his stomach swoops like he’s missed a step going down the stairs. Someone is trying to talk to him but it sounds like the buzzing of a gnat, and he can’t take his eyes off the way she’s tilting her head, eyeing one of the CD cases with her bright eyes in a way that reminds him of a bird. The lamp just behind her illuminates her hair in a little halo of gold. 

 

She shifts her weight from side to side as she puts in the CD, and Sam can’t help but stare at the soft curves of her hips, the grace in the way she moves. She puts on Harvest, and he can remember the day she first introduced him to Neil Young; Sam had made some comment about how terrible his voice was, and she threatened to break his nose. 

 

When she turns around and catches him staring her eyes go wide and shocked, and for a long moment Sam is scared she’ll just turn back around and pretend she hasn’t seen him. Maybe she doesn’t want to see him. Maybe she really has forgotten him.

 

Instead, though, she smiles (and still, after all these years, it’s like staring into the sun) and walks over to him slowly, and before he can think of anything to say she’s hugging him, molding herself against his chest, and they still fit together so perfectly, and he would swear her hair smells like summer rain. 

 

They sit down and catch up. The words don’t matter so much; it’s more about the expressions that flicker across her face and the way she squeezes his hand when he talks about Bobby’s death. He’s in love with her all over again by the time the album is over. Later, after the ordeal with the demon and the awkwardness of introducing her to his mother, he kisses her goodnight. Her arms twine around his neck and his thumb rubs gentle little circles in the hollow behind her ear, and they make plans to meet up again the next day. 

 

Maybe it’s the history between them, the innocence of those first clumsy kisses in the thick summer air, but when they spend the night together again it’s so pure and sweet and breathtaking that Sam feels like he’s sixteen again. He wants to spend hours just touching her, trying to relearn the contours of her body, feeling this new way they fit together, all her curves melting against the planes and angles of him. He wants to spend hours kissing her, soft and languid, parting his lips to let her lick into his mouth while his hands cup her cheeks reverently. But she rocks forward against him, reminds him how achingly hard he is already, and the kiss deepens into something blistering-hot and needy, and everything sort of just speeds up and goes hazy. When she’s finally naked there’s none of the shyness he remembers, just her eyes fluttering closed and her ragged breath and her hands gripping his shoulders, silently asking him for more. 

 

In some ways, everything’s different. He knows what he’s doing, now, knows the mechanics of how to touch her, but none of his experience could ever prepare him for the reality of what  _ she _ looks like when he touches her, the rosy-red  _ O _ of her mouth and the way she shakes and shudders when he crooks his fingers. She’s so goddamn beautiful, and Sam feels the same way he did that first night, his head spinning and his nerve endings singing, so overwhelmed he can barely see straight when he slides into the incredible slick heat of her. 

 

Sam remembers her often, whenever he’s reminded of love or how things could’ve been. 

 

Dean and Donna finally get married; took them long enough. Sam’s happy for them, so fucking happy it almost eclipses every other thought, but when he listens to the vows he gets choked up without warning. She’s still the only person he can imagine saying those words to. 

 

When he closes his eyes he can almost see her there at the altar. She would want sunflowers in her bouquet, he knows that much. She might not go for the traditional white dress; she always refused to wear white, because she was so damn clumsy it never stayed white, and she was never much for tradition anyway. He can almost smell her, too, but smell is such a strange shifting unreliable thing to remember, and he always gets her perfume mixed up with the smell of summer rain falling on the dusty ground outside Bobby’s house. 

 

When Sam remembers her, he remembers the little things. He remembers slow-dancing in the kitchen because her favorite song comes on while they’re making dinner. He remembers the way she sleeps, sprawled starfish-style across the bed, taking up every inch of space. He remembers going to the pet store together and making hopeful plans to get a dog. 

 

Sam used to think he’d fall in love again. He figured it would happen eventually. It never really does, though. 

 

Sometimes he meets someone, and something sparks, and he thinks  _ maybe _ . But it’s not the same. He knows it’ll never be the  _ same _ , he’s not expecting anyone to be  _ like _ her, but he never feels anything remotely like what he felt with her. There was something magical about their time together. It was warm and bright and glowing, the way he felt with her, comfortable and shaky-scary-new all at once, and comparing other women to her is like holding up a candle to the sun. 

 

When Sam remembers her, he remembers calling her “sunshine.”

 

They’re in a diner with Dean, one morning, a few months into their relationship, and when she slides back into the booth, he says, “Ordered for you, baby.” 

 

She glares at him, and he raises an eyebrow back. “I don’t like that,” she says bluntly. “Baby. It’s belittling. Nicknames should fit the person. Pick something else?” 

 

Sam sorta gapes at her for a moment while Dean makes a face into his coffee, but she’s looking back at him expectantly, so he considers it for a moment. 

 

“Sunshine,” he says eventually. She smiles. 

 

“Why?” 

 

“When I first kissed you. Remember? It was raining, but the way you smiled at me… well. Yeah. Sunshine.” 

 

Dean snorts. 

 

“I like it.” She grins, and yeah, that’s it, that’s exactly what he means; he sees her beaming and he has to avert his eyes. 

 

“What’s mine, then?” he asks. 

 

“Cupcake,” she says promptly. Sam splutters. “Cause you’re so fuckin’ sweet you’re gonna rot my teeth.” 

 

Dean snort-laughs so hard he almost chokes on his coffee, and she turns to him with a vicious little smirk. 

 

“I’ve got one for you, too,” she says, all sugary in a way that Sam knows means trouble. 

 

“Shoot, kid,” Dean says. 

 

She makes her eyes go big and her voice go high, and calls him “Senpai,” in such a dead-on impression of an anime character that Dean actually does choke this time. Sam laughs until there are actual tears in his eyes. 

 

When Sam remembers her, he remembers the way they found her. 

 

The bunker is quiet, and he drops his duffel and strides through room after room, so excited to see her, to tell her all the mundane details of the hunt, to hold her again. He can’t find her in the library. He can’t find her in the kitchen. He knows she’ll be here, though. She promised she’d always be there waiting. 

 

She’s starfished across their bed the same way she always sleeps, but it’s the middle of the afternoon and she’s cold. He remembers the confusion, more than anything, when he talks to the doctor and he’s saying something about an embolism and Sam doesn’t fucking understand, because he’d always worried about monsters and demons and instead he’s losing her to something he can’t fight. 

 

God, he wishes he could fight something. 

 

But there’s nothing to do, nothing to be done, except keep moving, even though it feels like there are jagged broken edges inside him that could cut him to shreds if he moves the wrong way. For months, after, he can’t move through what used to be their shared space without feeling something catch and slice. There are so many open wounds where she used to be.  

 

He tries not to remember that, though. 

 

She goes on hunts with them, sometimes, but mostly she stays home. The first time they’d tried it, working all together, Sam had been so worried about her he’d almost gotten himself killed; he was too busy watching her to notice the stupid rugaru creeping up behind him. Sam promises it won’t happen again, but the next time, she volunteers to stay home, and he’s secretly glad about it. 

 

One day they come home and she’s not there. Her car isn’t in the garage. When he calls her, it goes straight to voicemail. He looks in every room twice, and she’s just  _ not there _ , and in spite of himself he can feel the panic building in his throat, feel this cold steely thing clenching around his ribs, and he has to press the heels of his hands into his eyes to fight back the tears. 

 

“It’s okay, dude, she probably just ran out for food,” Dean says, mystified. Sam nods tightly and goes to their room. He double checks their dresser, just to make sure; everything’s there. She hasn’t packed her bags. Still, Sam’s breathing has gone shallow and painful, and it’s not any better by the time she gets home. 

 

“What’s wrong?” she asks, dropping her purse immediately and wrapping her arms around him. 

 

He can’t get the words out. It makes no goddamn sense, of course. It’s fucking stupid, he should know better, but it’s all twisted up in his head and he can’t spit it out in any way that doesn’t sound pathetic. 

 

“I should’ve left a note,” she whispers into his chest. “Fuck, I didn’t think, I’m so sorry.” 

 

“My dad- people just-” he says, strained. 

 

“Leave,” she finishes. 

 

“I never get to say goodbye, and-” 

 

“I promise I’ll always be here when you come home,” she says fiercely. “I  _ promise _ . I’m not going anywhere. Not without you.” 

 

She holds to it, from then on. He texts her when they’re getting ready to head back, and she’s always there, without fail, welcoming him home with that too-bright smile. She hears the roar of the Impala and she comes to the garage door to meet them, leaning against the doorframe. She’s always so happy to see him. He’s not sure he’ll ever get used to that. 

 

Turns out he won’t have time to get used to any of it, but those are still good memories. 

 

Sam’s starting to feel the years, now. He’s starting to ache, starting to feel like maybe the next time he dies it’ll actually stick, and he doesn’t mind that too much, but for now there’s still work to be done. Dean and Donna moved out when they were getting ready for their first kid, moved to a real house with an honest-to-god picket fence where Dean cooks dinner every night. So Sam has the bunker to himself now. It would be lonely, but there are usually a couple visitors coming and going. Hunters pass through. Cas stays, when he feels like slumming it with the humans for a while. Jody comes to visit more often, now that she’s retired, and sometimes Dean drops off his kids for a weekend so that he and Donna can have a real date. Every time Sam thinks he’s child-proofed the place, they find a new stash of weapons somewhere. 

 

But he’s taken on the work Bobby used to do, research and answering phones and passing along his wisdom, or whatever, to the new generation of hunters. He’s busy. He’s helping. He doesn’t usually feel lonely. 

 

Sometimes, though, he remembers her. He’ll see someone in a crowd who has her posture, or her hair, and he’s choked with memories before he can even process why. Sometimes when it smells like summer rain he can close his eyes and feel her there, feel her fingers grasping at his shirt, feel her lips, feel her velvet-hot skin under his palms. Sometimes he’ll hear that Neil Young song she loved and he could swear she’s just in the next room, cocking her head to the side all bird-like and graceful, waiting for him to come dance with her. 

 

He knows he’ll find his way back to her again, someday. He knows she’ll be there waiting for him. 


End file.
